JoJo Siwa Doesn’t Care if She Lost Fans After Coming Out

JoJo Siwa came out publicly almost three years ago now. The former Dance Moms star is now speaking candidly about what it has been like for her as queer. In the debut episode of the reality star’s new podcast, Siwa, 20, reflected on how she decided to tell her fans that she was a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. While on the phone with her girlfriend at the time, Siwa recalled telling her, "'I think I wanna come out to the world.' I posted this picture and threw it on my Instagram Story, and that’s how I confirmed it … I didn’t think twice about it."

The reaction, she said, was largely positive. However, that didn't nullify how there were still plenty of people who were not happy that Siwa was sharing her identity publicly. "There was also a lot of negativity, and I did lose a lot," she continued. "I didn’t care, and I still don’t care about the things I lost and the people that I lost and if I lost a chunk of fans because it’s who I am."

Further explaining her point, the "Boomerang" singer proclaimed that she had built her career off of “being genuine,” and if her fans couldn’t deal with her sexuality, then they were more than welcome to leave. "If you didn’t like me because [one day] I was straight, and [the next day] I was gay, then you’re not meant to like me anyways," she said. "I just try to really be genuine, really be who I am."

This isn't the first time Siwa has talked about the backlash to her coming out. Over the summer, Siwa said in an interview that a number of corporations decided to “blackball” her from working with them because of her sexuality. “I had a lot of people of corporations [who] told me that I made the wrong choice and that I shouldn’t have come out,” she said at the time. “[They said] that I shouldn’t tell my young demographic that I’m gay.”

Siwa is currently starring as a contestant on the second season of the Fox reality series Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

"Pansexuality" is when someone experiences physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction to a person regardless of their gender identity, per GLAAD. This is one of several terms under the bi+ umbrella.

While there are many overlaps between pansexuality and bisexuality, the official definitions differ in their approach to gender. The prefix pan- means "all," while bisexuality is the attraction to multiple gender identities. According to Stonewall, there may be individuals who align with the way pansexuality is defined yet identify with the term bisexuality. Others may use pansexual and bisexual interchangeably.

Like bisexuality, pansexuality is often associated with negative connotations. Often, those who identify with being labeled as an experimentation phase or to be a stepping stone to being gay. However, according Stonewall, the term pansexual has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary since the early 1900s and has been used in its current definition since at least the late 1960s.

LGBTQ+ people have long been using a range of different terms to describe their identities. As we've progressed as far as social acceptance and social media, the terms are more widespread.

Take a look below at 11 celebrities who are pansexual: